The demand for benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX) is increased worldwide by 4˜6% per year, which reaches a sharp increase of as much as two times GDP growth and about three times the demand growth for petroleum products. Such an increase is caused due to the rapidly increasing demand of aromatic hydrocarbons particularly in China.
Conventionally, benzene, toluene and xylene have been produced by hydrotreating and extracting pyrolysis gasoline obtained together with main feedstock products such as ethylene, propylene and so on in naphtha pyrolysis plants using naphtha, or by separating a reformate resulting from reforming naphtha.
However, such techniques for preparing aromatic hydrocarbons are problematic because only naphtha having a narrow boiling point obtained via atmospheric distillation of crude oil is used, making it impossible to cope with the shortage of naphtha in the world market due to the rapidly increasing demand of aromatic hydrocarbons. Hence, aromatic hydrocarbon feeds which can replace naphtha are required, and furthermore, increasing the yield of aromatic hydrocarbons and olefin is receiving great attention.